Young people are still dying in prison

The Government should do more to find out why

SIR – Last week, an inquest jury examining the death in 2011 of 17-year-old Ryan Clark in HMYOI Wetherby criticised a string of failures by the authorities to safeguard the life of a vulnerable, emotionally damaged boy who had been in care since he was 16 months old.

Since Ryan died, 45 more children and young people aged 24 and under have also lost their lives in penal custody. There have been 282 deaths of children and young people since 2000. The same failings are being raised time and time again.

Inquests into individual deaths are held in isolation from each other and do not address wider systemic failures in state care both within and outside prisons. The Government’s response has been fragmented and piecemeal, with little recognition of the wider public health and welfare implications, as well as criminal justice issues, raised by these deaths.

As organisations concerned about the welfare of children and young people within the criminal justice system, we are calling on the Government to establish, as a matter of urgency, an independent review with effective involvement from bereaved families in order to safeguard lives in future. How many more children and young people will die in penal custody before the Government acts?